But on Tuesday, Gates was acting out a scene from 1984. He gave a classic “War is Peace” speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “while we have a long-term goal of abolishing nuclear weapons once and for all, given the world in which we live, we have to be realistic about that proposition." Apparently, "being realistic" means spending billions of dollars on rebuilding the nuclear weapons complex.

Gates really let us down in his speech by using the same spin--“a safer, more secure warhead”--that we have heard for years from this administration on the need for a Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Yet only moments later, he assured us that the current stockpile is “safe, reliable, and secure.” The costly and risky RRW series as planned, however, does not have a nuclear test pedigree that even approaches the extensive test pedigree of the existing stockpile.

While Gates warned us about the risk of other nations building up their nuclear stockpile, he did not make the clear connection between their buildup and our need for the RRW program, which he claims would “reinvigorate and rebuild our infrastructure and expertise” and deliver an “industrial complex that could produce new weapons if the need arose.” Our experience has taught us that once the government builds a program, it tends to justify its own existence. The new complex would inevitably lead to new weapons, whether they are required or not.

Yesterday, the Carnegie Endowment's George Perkovich challenged Gates for outlining a reactive U.S. approach to nonproliferation, instead of a proactive approach in which the U.S. leads by seriously reducing its stockpile, thus shifting responsibility to other nations who do not take steps to reduce their stockpiles. In a policy paper for the next President, Perkovich outlines the security risks brought about by the U.S. not helping to carry out the global reduction of nuclear weapons.

This push for RRW also does not advance our nonproliferation agenda with Russia, as many Russian scientists see our move as a veiled attempt to develop a more advanced warhead.

But there is another reason why RRW makes us look bad in Russia. According to Carnegie's Director in Russia, Rose Gottemoeller, Russians see the U.S. push for RRW as a reason to scoff at our scientific prowess, since they claim that their weapons are both reliable and not in need of replacement.

Gates' new spin on the issue--which is likely intended to win over congressional support--is that RRW will help the U.S. reduce its stockpile to “1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads, and we can probably do better than that.” In fact, we can do a lot better than that: POGO's position is that the U.S. could reduce its stockpile to around 500 warheads. If Gates is serious about redirecting resources from wasteful programs, he can start by cutting the number of deployed nuclear weapons to a more sane level of about 500. There are also tremendous savings that could be gained by scaling back on several superfluous delivery systems, including the B-52, Minuteman 3, and D-5.
In addition, land-based missile fields could be shut down as security at these bases is in serious disarray. For example, Minot Air Force Base has had one debacleafteranother, such as losing control of their nuclear warheads and seriously failing a security test. If Gates wants more money for Predators and Up-Armored vehicles, these would be good places to start.

That being said, we hope Congress does not get duped into thinking that RRW and serious arms reduction go hand-in-hand. We also find it interesting that Gates talked about the U.S. (which has approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials) sitting down with China (which has about 240) to talk about limiting arms.

There were also some worrisome notes with the way Gates spoke about “declaratory” policies. Some of our sources deciphered his statements to mean that the U.S. will now leave the nuclear option open for anyone who aids and abets nuclear terrorism, be it an individual who finances terrorism or a country whose banks provide the funding. This can actually dilute the credibility of our nuclear threat, and it conflicts with our treaty obligations.

Comments

Yeah, the world is such a warm and wonderful place. Let's beat all our nukes into plowshares and better still forget how to make any more. That should ensure peace reigns eternally because obviously there was no war before there were nukes, right?